Foreword by Paul van Heyningen — Head of Sustainability and Estates at DECC

This report tells the story of a project we have been hosting at DECC that seeks to unlock energy and carbon savings in workplaces through staff engagement and behaviour change. DECC partnered with design-for-behaviour-change specialists CarbonCulture, supported by the Technology Strategy Board (TSB), to pilot an innovative, user-centred digital platform, intended to engage staff on sustainability issues.

CarbonCulture at DECC created an online space that can deliver behaviour change through developing and reinforcing community, and encouraging user engagement with fun and easy to use tools that appeal to wide audiences. The aim of this pilot has been to test the ability of this method to deliver user engagement, and to develop tools and approaches that could be taken up by large populations of building users across the UK at low cost.

There is still a lot of work to be done to meet the ambitious carbon reduction targets set by the UK Government — both for its own operations, and for the country as a whole. Adding high-performance behaviour change to our portfolio of approaches provides an opportunity for government and businesses alike to cut their energy bills. Through public engagement we can help create energy and carbon literacy, a key step in making further savings.

In this project we have made substantial progress in this fast emerging field of behaviour change. We have gained valuable insights, and revealed good practices that invite more investigation and show the path forward.